


better than a homing beacon

by 28ghosts



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cassian Andor (Rogue One)/Luke Skywalker (SW: OT) - Freeform, M/M, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-20 14:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Cassian repeats what he’d told Loneozner: he needs transport to the Thand Sector, and quickly. No Hutts, no Imperials, and he can work for passage. And, of course, the droid: “There’s something wrong with my R4 unit,” he says. The R4 spins its dome in acknowledgement. “Any time it accesses its nav systems, it crashes.”“Luke’s really the person to ask about droid stuff,” Camie says.





	better than a homing beacon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/gifts).



> For Thymesis, for X-Ship 2018.
> 
> Thymesis, your prompt for this ship was a ton of fun; I loved your thoughts on how Cassian might view Luke, which is what I decided to run with. I hope you like this!

“An unremarkable looking planet,” K-2 says from the copilot’s seat. “Even accelerating towards it at our current speed, I find nothing interesting about it whatsoever.”

Their shuttle is worse for wear, stolen, and meant for a crew of at least four. Cassian operates on instinct, fumbling for control of what K-2 can’t manage. Still, even if there are more urgent things at hand, K-2 isn’t wrong. From orbit, Tatooine could be uninhabited; its surface is the smooth, featureless brown of so many other arid desert worlds. But Cassian reaches for something cheerful to say anyways, in part just to annoy K-2. “I think the Hutts would disagree with you on that one,” he says. Which is when Tatooine's atmosphere starts to batter at the ship’s hull, and Cassian nearly swears.

“The Hutts have the privilege of enjoying Tatooine at a more reasonable speed.”

“You have a point,” Cassian says. “How’s our shielding?”

At that instant, the ship’s alarms kick into a high pitch. Cassian swears, and K-2 says as mildly as a droid can, “I won’t dignify that with a response.”

It won’t be the first time Cassian’s crashed a ship he’d hoped to land, but Tatooine isn’t the most convenient planet to be stranded without a transport off-planet. At least the mercenaries they’d stolen the ship from are stranded dead in space, rather than chasing them.

It’ll be best to crash far enough from a spaceport that they don’t send anyone to investigate; better they write him off as some poor traveller who had a bad brush with Hutt enforcers (not too far from the truth.) Easier to fend off scavengers than security; Cassian’s continued survival is proof enough of that fact. But crossing too much of Tatooine on foot seems itself a quick way to die. Either by exposure or by unglamorous introduction to local scavengers and/or wildlife. He tells as much to K-2. “Any ideas?”

K-2’s visual display flashes with light as the droid runs calculations. As the ship draws closer to Tatooine, the turbulence worsens, tossing Cassian against the harness that holds him down.

For a breathless moment, Cassian feels nothing but a blank sort of panic. Maybe this is it; maybe this is where he dies -- perhaps he and K-2 burn up before their stolen ship even has a chance to land, or maybe it’s the impact that kills them. And the first thing Cassian thinks, breaking through the dread, is, ah, how quickly will the Rebellion know I’m dead? How will they know to send someone to Kafrene in my place? Someone has to go; Tivik will only wait so long--

There is more of Tatooine than space visible in the ship’s viewport now. Huge stretches of flat, pale deserts cover most of its surface, disrupted and fissured where there is more rock than sand. It seems bare at first, but the closer the ship gets, the more it tosses him and K-2 against their seats, and Cassian can start to make out details here and there: closer to Tatooine’s poles, the long white lines of buildings, moisture farms and hydroponic rigs where crops must be grown; at the equator, he imagines he can see the great floating ships of the Hutt cartels drifting between canyons and mesas.

It snaps him back into the moment. There are people there on the surface, maybe some of them straining to see his ship streaking through the sky towards them, but most of them don’t notice, don’t care.

K-2 says, “I have a plan. It’s not a good one.”

“Perfect,” Cassian says, with zest. Either they’ll pull this off, or they won’t. No other option. K-2 takes control of the steering yoke, and the ship jerks into a turn so quickly that Cassian sees stars behind his eyelids.

* * *

Cassian wakes up slowly. The ship is creaking around him, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see K-2 around the ship, so he can’t have been out for long.

The shuttle systems blare. Cassian pays them no heed; ever since they broke away from the mercenaries trailing them, he’s known they’d need to ditch this shuttle even in the unlikely case that it survived the landing. Its credentials aren’t so well-forged that it would stay undetected in a spaceport for long. Not without a moderate bribe, at least, and if Cassian had the credits for that, he’d have other ways to get to Kafrene. He groans and rolls his neck slowly, feeling for where the pain is. He hurts, but not a sort of normal amount.

“Remarkable,” K-2 says, noticing he’s awake. “We’ve crashed again.”

“Not a crash,” Cassian says. He loosens the harness holding him into his seat and rolls his shoulders. His head aches. “A controlled descent.”

K-2’s head swivels a perfect ninety degrees to fix him with an unimpressed stare.

Cassian ignores him. “I’m going to scavenge what’s left in the hull. How far are we from somewhere inhabited?”

“We’re a four-hour walk from a place called Anchorhead. You’re welcome.”

There’s some rations in the hold and a beat-up survey skiffer with a powered-down R4 that might get Cassian most of the way to Anchorhead if he he’s lucky. The R4 boots, which is a relief, and chirps at him amiably, apparently unbothered that it’s been requisitioned from the mercenary force that had previously owned it; K-2 informs Cassian that the R4 unit had been in storage for quite some time and is mostly relieved to be in use again.

K-2 helps him drag the skiffer out of the cargo hull. The ship is half-buried in sand and has settled in at an angle, so it’s treacherous for Cassisan to move too quickly, but between the two of them, they manage it.

They’ve crashed where it’s late morning, and even though the sun is low in the sky, Cassian is already pouring sweat. There’s nothing but sand in every direction, nothing to orient him besides the sun and the long furrow in the sand behind the crashed shuttle. Cassian’s head throbs, and his chest aches where he was thrown against the harness. He wipes sweat off his forehead spits in the sand. There’s no time to lose. The sooner he gets moving, the sooner he’ll be out of the sun. “Does the R4 know how to get to Anchorhead?”

The R4 chirps, and Cassian doesn’t need K-2 to know the agromech sounds uncertain. “Of course it doesn’t,” K-2 says. The droid kneels in the sand, his chest panel popping open, and the agromech extends a connector into one of the information ports K-2 has. After a moment, the R4 draws it back. “And now it does. You’re welcome.” K-2 pats the R4’s dome. The R4 spins its dome around twice. Cassian doesn’t know what to make about that.

K-2 will attract attention here, but less if he’s in pieces. K-2 complains, but he’s used to it. He powers down, and Cassian listens to the wind hitting the ship hull as he dismantles his friend. K-2 fits into two crates mounted on the back of the skiffer.

“Alright, then,” he tells the R4 as the skiffer lurches uneasily off the ground. “What do you think the odds are we survive our way in, hmm?”

The R4 whistles with alarm, and Cassian laughs.

* * *

The heat is slightly more bearable once the skiffer gets moving. The air helps. Part of Cassian is tempted to strip off his shirt, though he knows the sunburn he’d endure would be worse. The higher the sun gets, though, the brighter it glints off the sand.

The skiffer’s dashclock is synced to some other place, some other planet, but its units seem standard to Basic minutes. After what the skiffer measures as an hour, Cassian slows to a stop. The R4 whistles. “Don’t worry back there,” Cassian says. He’d rather it was K-2 he was riding with, but it’s nice to have company of some sort. He dismounts the skiffer to rummage through the crates latched to the back. Under one of K-2’s arms is a box of rations. Cassian’s hands shake as he rips open a pack of hydration gels.

Cassian only knows a little binary, but the skiffer has a display the R4 can write messages to. “How far away are we?” he asks. The gel leaves a sharp, sweet taste in his mouth, not altogether unpleasant.

The R4 trills as it computes, and Cassian braces himself on the skiffer’s hull to lean in and check the skiffer’s display. The hull is hot from so much time in the sun, hot enough to nearly burn, and there’s nothing on the display. “R4?”

He looks over his shoulder to see the droid in its tandem mount, completely powered off. “Ah,” Cassian says to no one. “Perfect.” All the lights on the R4’s dome flash, and the droid boots back on with an apologetic beep. “What was that?”

The R4 trills and flashes some more, sending an error log the skiff’s display. If Cassian had more time or K-2 to help him, they could probably fix the droid without much trouble, but Cassian’s only goal right now is getting to the Ring of Kafrene as quickly as possible. Which means getting to Anchorhead as quickly as possible. “Let’s try that again,” he says to the droid. “How far away are we?”

The droid crashes again.

“Perfect,” Cassian says. Now he really wishes it was K-2 with him. He chews down another hydration gel, then packs the rations back into the crates. There must be something with the R4’s nav system, perhaps deliberately sabotaged -- he should have had the R4 do a diagnostic sweep before they’d left the ship. Perhaps they would have attracted scavengers, but if Cassian gets lost on Tatooine’s surface, there will be too many ways to die.

He squints up at the sun, considering the angle. There’s a few hours left yet before the heat of the day, and he knows they’d left the shuttle wreck headed towards Anchorhead. The skiffer is faster than walking, though loaded down as it is, not by much. The closer they get to Anchorhead, the less a bad angle will matter.

The R4 whines with distress when it boots again, error messages flashing over the console display. “I think you’ve got a bad nav system,” Cassian says to the droid. “But don’t worry. I’ll get us there.”

He swings one leg over the seat of the skiffer, wincing when his knee aches. The hydration gels have helped his headache, at least. Cassian eyes the skiffer’s onboard compass with distrust -- it’s calibrated for the magsystem of a different planet, after all -- and between the compass and the angle of the sun, he makes his best guess. The skiffer powers on with a shudder, lurching into the air.

Cassian has always been good at getting where he needs to be. He was raised to notice things, to never enter a situation without planning an escape route. It’s why he’s survived as long as he has. He’s careful, and he’s decisive when he needs to be. He has a head for directions, never forgets the way a place is laid out, never forgets the point of a mission; for Cassian, it’s always been like there’s a homing beacon somewhere, calling to him, and he orients itself by it.

After another hour, he stops the skiffer again. He tries asking the droid for directions again, and it crashes; when it reboots, Cassian tells it to run diagnostics instead. He chews through another three hydration gels, barely tasting them. The cloth he has tied over his neck to prevent sunburn is soaked in sweat. The skiffer’s charge gauge has dipped below a third. They’ve got to be close. Cassian can feel it.

A half hour later, Cassian sees what must be a moisture farm in the distance: white-domed, low to the ground. Another half hour passes and he travels by another, closer this time, and then another. The droid finishes its diagnostics and flashes an alert onto the skiff’s display: results inconclusive. Of course.

The skiffer throws a first alert that it’s low on power just as Cassian arrives on the outskirts of Anchorhead.

* * *

It’s easy to find a place to stay, though it takes time to haggle the hotelier down to something reasonable. The room costs half the credits Cassian has left, and paying the hotelier on top of that to watch over the skiffer while he struggles to unload it costs more than he’d like to pay. But, as Cassian knows from experience, it does little good to pay your guards poorly. The hotelier locks up the skiffer to charge, and Cassian retreats to his rented room.

The refresher is all-sonic, not surprising on a desert world. Cassian strips and sets his close to clean while he showers. The sonic is poorly calibrated, and its frequency makes the abrasions on Cassian’s chest from the crash sting, but Cassian is in high spirits nonetheless. He’s made it to Anchorhead safely.

He dresses and eats from what rations he managed to scavenge. They’re tasteless but filling. The next thing he needs is a lead on a transport ships, so he wanders around Anchorhead with the R4 unit in tow. He keeps his blaster inside his jacket where it’s hidden but not hard to reach, and he’s glad he did. Most people in Anchorhead are armed, though usually with farmers’ weapons, not soldiers’ weapons. Lightweight blaster rifles meant to scare off animals, even a few battered slugthrowers. It’s late in the afternoon by the time Cassian find the bar the hotelier had recommended. It’s dim, and there are only a few people sitting around drinking, but it’s across from a power station and where the mechanics come to drink. If Cassian’s lucky, he might even find someone who knows how to fix the R4 unit. Cassian tells the bartender he’s looking for a local guide, and the bartender nods towards a man in the corner: perhaps Cassian’s age, perhaps a little older, wearing a white tunic under a weathered black jacket. “Fixer’ll fix you up.”

Cassian goes to introduce himself. “I’m only Fixer to my friends,” the man says, though he shakes Cassian’s hand. “Loneozner to you.”

“Right.” No problem. Cassian’s used to being mistrusted, and Loneozner is right to mistrust him. “Kess,” he says, pointing to himself. “I need to get to the Thand Sector, but no Hutt ships.”

Loneozner snorts with derision. “Hope you’re not in much of a hurry, pal. Not much besides Hutt ships headed that way.”

Cassian spares a little of what he has to buy the man a drink, after which he’s a little more helpful, though not much. One of Loneozner’s friends joins them after a while, a woman who introduces herself as Camie. “I hope Fixer isn’t giving you a hard time,” she says, as she sits down close to him. Loneozner rolls his eyes when she kisses his cheek. “We don’t get many visitors from offworld around these parts. What brings you here?”

Cassian repeats what he’d told Loneozner: he needs transport to the Thand Sector, and quickly. No Hutts, no Imperials, and he can work for passage. And, of course, the droid: “There’s something wrong with my R4 unit,” he says. The R4 spins its dome in acknowledgement. “Any time it accesses its nav systems, it crashes.”

“Luke’s really the person to ask about droid stuff,” Camie says. “Once Deak’s off work at Tosche Station, I bet him and Luke will come over. Transport is harder.” Camie is more optimistic than Loneozner, though. It’s true that most of the established shipping routes off Tatooine towards the Outer Rim are Imperial or Hutt, but there’s a transit hub nearby -- Mos Eisley -- where traders land to sell or buy goods, then arrange a crew as needed. The best way to discreetly leave the planet will definitely be Mos Eisley, according to Camie. By landspeeder it’s only a few hours. Skiffer will take longer, but it shouldn’t be longer than the trip from the wreck to Anchorhead had been -- not that he’s told Camie or Loneozner about the shuttle crash. The less they know, the better, for his sake and theirs.

They talk for awhile about inconsequential things. Cassian mostly asks Camie questions about herself because she’s gossipy and chatty, though Loneozner is definitely nicer when she’s around. A drink later, Loneozner interrupts Camie by sitting up straight at the table and waving towards a group of people at the door.

Cassian looks, too -- it’s a handful of people, mostly in mechanics’ jumpsuits. These must be the workers from Tosche Station. One of them looks out of place, dressed in white. He’s younger-looking than the rest and, Cassian notices as he approaches the table, pretty, in a slight sort of way. “Laze, Camie!” he says. Then, a little accusingly, “You didn’t tell me you had a visitor.”

“He’s not _my_ visitor,” Loneozner says.

The young man ignores Loneozner. “My name’s Luke,” he says. He flicks his hair out of his eyes and extends one hand to shake. “That’s a nice droid you’ve got there. You think you’d see more R4 units around here, huh?”

“Kess,” Cassian says. Luke’s hands are tougher than Cassian expected, given how slight he seems. “It’s a...pleasure to meet you.” That part is less of a lie, though. Luke’s the first person he’s met on Tatooine who doesn’t seem wary of him. Not that it’s wise of Luke to be as open and trusting as he seems, but still.

“You’re not from around here, right?” 

Loneozner rolls his eyes. “Luke has a billion questions he’d like to ask you.”

Luke flushes at the neck. “Shut up, Laze. Just because you like it on this planet doesn’t mean the rest of us want to stick around here forever.”

Cassian bites his lip to keep from smiling. He interrupts before Loneozner can say anything in reply. “Your friend was telling me you’re good with droids. I think this R4 unit has a memory defect, something to do with its nav system. You wouldn’t be willing to take a look at it? I don’t have much in terms of credits to spare, but…”

Luke is already sitting on the floor of the bar, looking at the R4 unit. “Hey there. How long have you been on Tatooine, huh?” The R4 chirps. “Aha. And how long has _that_ been happening?”

The droid beeps and whistles for longer than Cassian’s ever heard it go on for. Loneozner rolls his eyes. “Told you,” he mutters.

“Right. Well, I bet I know what’s wrong with you then. You run diagnostics yet?” Luke talks to the droid like he understands every bit of binary. The droid beeps more. “Uh-huh. Well, I bet I know what’s wrong with you. Hey, Kess. Have you got somewhere clean we can take apart this R4? Normally I’d say we should just do it at Tosche Station, but they just closed up for the night, and Teak’ll throw grease at me if I try to talk about droids at him any longer.”

“I have rooms,” Cassian says, “nearby. But I won’t be able to pay you--”

“That’s alright. It’s a simple fix.” Luke dusts his hands together and stands. When he grins, he looks even younger. “You can just tell me how you ended up with this R4 in return. It says it was pretty dramatic. Let me borrow Teak’s toolkit, then we’ll go.”

Damn talkative droids. He glares at the R4 and tells himself not to forget to wipe its memory before he sells it.

* * *

The walk to where Cassian is staying is quicker with Luke, mostly because Luke actually knows his way around Anchorhead. Either he’s oblivious to any danger, or he knows Anchorhead’s residents well enough not to worry about someone pointing a weapon at him. Cassian asks him a few questions, and Luke talks about his life without much reservation. He lives with his aunt and uncle on a moisture farm, wants to be a pilot. He’s a good trick pilot in the canyons, he says; it’s sport on Tatooine to fly through them killing womp rats.

Any reservations Cassian has about letting Luke know where he sleeps are gone by the time they reach the hotel. He almost wants to tell Luke to stop talking, tell him he’s giving too much away, that anyone listening could figure out what his schedule is, how to rob him. But this isn’t a mission, and Luke isn’t an agent of the Rebellion, and this is the way things are supposed to be. Should be.

Cassian’s room is simple, but it’s mostly clean, and Luke gets to work on the droid right away. It’s a simple fix, just sand in circuits, Luke says; it’s a question of _which_ circuits.

Cassian sits cross-legged on the floor and watches Luke work. He talks to himself as he disassembles the droid, laying pieces out with a practiced, methodical fashion. He’s unselfconscious and doesn’t seem to even notice Cassian watching him. He’s slender and more deliberate than graceful. It’s easy to imagine him working on moisture harvesters, doing something similar: taking everything apart until he finds what’s broken, then fixing it.

It’s hard to imagine someone like Luke spending his time with someone like Loneozner. Cassian finds himself speaking without quite meaning to. “Your friends seem…”

Luke interrupts him, waving a hand dismissively. “They’re alright, I promise. Laze is just…prickly these days. One of our friends left, and I think he misses him.”

That wasn’t quite what Cassian had meant. His distrust of Loneozner more comes from Loneozner’s willingness to let his younger friend wander off to a strange man’s rooms alone, without any warning or check. Cassian doesn’t intend any harm, but he’s a dangerous man, and Luke and his friends trusting him so much is...disconcerting. When Cassian was Luke’s age, he’d probably killed as many men as Luke has killed womp rats.

Luke turns his attention to Cassian, though, and points the hydrospanner at him. “So are you gonna tell me how you got this droid or not?”

While the R4 is powered down and can’t contradict him, Cassian spins up a story about outrunning his debts. A betrayal by a business partner, and Hutt mercenaries after him -- it’s not his finest lies, but Luke eats it up.

Takes the kid an hour or two to get the R4 up and running. Cassian thanks him. “Sorry I can’t pay you,” he says, reaching out to help Luke up.

Luke takes his hand. “It’s no problem.” He grins again. “Just don’t sell me out to the Hutts, alright?”

“I think I can manage that.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to get a drink, maybe,” Luke says. “There’s better bars here than the one near Tosche, I promise.”

“Sorry,” Cassian says. “Better keep my head low around here.”

“Oh. Right. That makes sense.” Luke’s disappointment is palpable. “Well, sorry to leave you then. Guess we probably won’t run into each other again, huh.”

“Probably not,” Cassian agrees. When Luke’s halfway to the door, Cassian sighs. He’s about to make a bad decision. “I could sleep,” he says evenly. “You could join me.”

Luke turns and makes an effort to scowl at Cassian. “I barely know anything about you,” he says. It doesn’t seem like his heart’s in it.

Cassian shrugs. Luke bites his lip for a second, looking Cassian up and down, and a familiar bit of heat starts to curl in Cassian’s stomach. He’s lonely without K-2 to talk do, and what’s the harm? It’s hard to imagine Luke posing danger to anything, except maybe womp rats, and even then, only when he’s in a speeder.

In the morning, Cassian will count his credits and check on his bruises. There will be just enough to get to Mos Eisley with two droids and no questions. There he can sell the repaired R4, and then he will book transport off this planet, and he will shake the sand out of his boots on the trip to the Ring of Kafrene. Right now, a farmboy named Luke is crawling into bed with him, and that’s all Cassian has to think about for the moment.


End file.
